Shadows of Absalom

Adventures in the Big City

Fog Island

Fog island is a small 2 mile by 1.5 mile stony islet with steep rocky hills covered with scrub brush and a few sparse trees, located approximately 14.5 miles SW of Escadar in the Inner Sea. Perpetually shrouded in mists and fog, hence the name, the only know beach, Fortune Cove, is a dangerous, shallow, rocky recess leading to a smooth pebble beach perhaps 50 yards long and about 10 feet wide, just opposite Pliers Rock. Apart from migratory sea birds which make their nests on the island, and some bats which live in the cliff side caves, little is known to inhabit the island, which is known to have no fresh water source. History tells of a time in the past when disgraced members of the Primarch's family, and even one or two disgraced Primarchs of Absalom themselves, were banished to the island to live out their few remaining days.

Discovered 600 years ago by the famous Taldan naval explorer, Lucintus Plier the island, and its tiny rocky neighbor known as Pliers Point, pre-date the rising of the Island of Kortos by the Starstone. The Azlanti gillmen know it as a cursed island, Athali'andaxra, and never visit it. The last person known to have set foot on the island in recent memory (85 years ago) was a seaman from Escadar named Iranius, who swam to Fog Island when his ship, the Cockle Shell, sank after a large rogue wave capsized it at night. The only known survivor, he spent five days alone on the island, until a fishing boat from Escadar, following the wreckage, saw smoke from his fire and picked him up. He'd managed to survive on crabs and seaweed, and he said the only reason he'd survived even that long was because on the third night a large rainstorm hit the island, and he'd been able to save enough water to stay alive. Iranius reported several 'low stone buildings' that he'd observed several hills away from his camp site that he did not explore, but otherwise saw no other living creatures, apart from the little wildlife that lived on the island. Iranius' story was made into a (melodramatic) minor best-seller, called Cast Upon a Deadly Rock, which earned the castaway's family enough money to buy a small villa on Escadar, where his grandson lives to this day.

Sailors who ply the Inner Sea also believe Fog Island to be cursed, and so avoid going near it.